Thursday, February 7, 2013

The MacBrides have gathered in their English countryside
retreat, a converted barn, for the first time since matriarch, Lydia’s
death. Rowan was the headmaster at the
prestigious school, allowing his three children to attend tuition free, Lydia a
magistrate, the family seemingly leading a charmed life, but there is a
stranger who has always been in their midst, convinced that the family is
responsible for a life wasted, and more sinisterly, holds Lydia responsible for
a death. Plotting and planning for many
years, the time has come for vengeance to be wrought on the unsuspecting
family. Told effectively through
flashbacks, the identity of the stranger is slowly revealed, the plot slowly
unfolds as the suspense builds until the final scene that not only threatens
the bonds of a family, but the life of the family’s youngest member, baby
Edie. Fast paced with a brooding
atmosphere, The Burning Air is a chilling
story of festering vengeance and the kind of hatred that
ruins lives.

A young woman is raped in Palm Beach after an evening of
college students drinking and partying.
A young woman is killed on a golf course in Cape Cod and no one is
asking too many questions. Except George
Beckett, a young attorney working for the Cape Code district attorney’s
office. Beckett feels his life since he
graduated college is more than one of patronage, he often feels he is a puppet,
his movements and decisions controlled by someone else. From a modest family, George became entangled
with the rich and privileged in college, not realizing that with the good life,
comes consequences, but he is quickly learning he does not like to be beholden
or controlled by anyone and starts searching for answers, traveling from the
Cape to Idaho to Hawaii to Costa Rica to France and back to New York, tracking
down people who should have answers but are now living with the consequences of
their silence. With little concern for
his safety, reputation or future, George knows the only way he can live with
himself is to find and reveal the truths that have escaped him, yet haunted him
for most of his adult life.

“Every story has a narrator.
Someone who writes it down after it’s all over. Why am I the narrator of this story? I am because
it is the story of my life---and of the people I love most….” So begins the
story of Harry and Madeleine Winslow, talented, charismatic couple, he a
National Book Award winner, she a gracious, beautiful woman of exceptional
breeding. Whether they are hosting a
formal dinner in their Manhattan brownstone or a weekend at their East Hampton
cottage, the pair makes their guests feel comfortable and like part of the
family. In their early forties, Harry
and Maddy are still admired by their peers but both find themselves attractive
to ingénue Claire who easily fits into their lives and becomes a part of their
circle. Claire is delighted to be
welcomed so warmly by such charming, real people, but soon their friendship
isn’t enough and an odyssey begins that will take the trio in various
configurations overseas to Rome, to France
and back to New York where they all learn the consequences of
overreaching and wanting more than is yours to have. Walter, a lifelong friend of Maddy narrates
the action, proving to be an unreliable narrator when readers realize he too is
in love with Maddy but is too reserved to have ever told her, much as
Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway. Debut
novelist Dubow writes with the surety and sensuality of a veteran novelist
spinning a story that will keep pages turning, exploring relationships,
marriages, friends and lovers and all the variants. Subtle in places, overt in others, this is a
novel with writing to be savored even as the plot has you racing to an
inevitable ending you hope never to reach.

Single mother and junior partner in a high-powered Manhattan
law firm Kate knows she doesn’t spend as much time with her teenage daughter
Amelia each day as she would like to.
She and Amelia have carved out time each week to spend time together and
both seem satisfied with their relationship and smart, bookish Amelia has never
given Kate a moment’s trouble. When Kate
is called to Amelia’s prestigious Brooklyn school to take Amelia, who has just
been suspended for cheating, home, Kate is in shock. She cannot imagine why Amelia would feel the
need to cheat and is shocked and devastated when she arrives at the school to
learn that Amelia has jumped from the school roof and is dead. The police quickly rule Amelia’s death a
suicide, something Kate finds hard to believe but cannot argue with until she
receives an anonymous text message that reads “She didn’t jump”. Kate immediately throws herself into learning
everything she can about what Amelia did in the last weeks of her life using
blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Amelia’s texts and e-mails and realizes she didn’t
know her daughter as well as she thought she did. With the help of a sympathetic cop who lets Kate
assist in the investigation, a little more than is believable, Kate unravels
the last weeks of Amelia’s life and learns that her daughter was not as
adjusted as she believed and may have been the victim of bullying. Kate also learns how easy it is to manipulate
people using cyberspace and becomes disillusioned as she realizes how little
attention she was paying and wonders if this tragedy could have been
avoided. A gripping novel, there are
certain parts of this novel, which is very busy at times, that are a little
unbelievable, but the pace keeps the plot moving and allowing for these uneven
parts to be overlooked. As Kate reaches
the end of her search, there are many more things at play than she expected,
and perhaps are necessary, but Kate and Amelia are such real, characters,
Amelia very likable, that hearts will break for their loss and for what could
have been.

Build a Better World

The 11th Annual Adult Summer Reading Club has come to a close.

The club's 157 members have read a total of 1,515 books!

Thank you, all, for your enthusiastic participation.

Quote to Inspire

"Fiction, imaginative work that is, is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners."~Virginia Woolf

11th Annual

To see a larger image of this graph, look through the member reviews. It will usually be posted on Friday afternoons.

How to Use this Blog:

To post a review for a book, please submit it via the "Finished a Book" link from the club's webpage: http://www.hclibrary.us/asrc.htm.

Because all posts & comments must be approved by the library, and because the librarians sometimes take summer vacations too, there will be a delay before you see your submission on the blog. Please be patient; your review will appear.